In the meantime, two other cases that will dramatically change the workers’ compensation landscape for years to come are presently before the Florida Supreme Court. In my view, the most significant is Marvin Castellanos v. Next Door Company, et al. In a nutshell, Castellanos involves a challenge to Jeb Bush’s formula for preventing injured workers from being able to hire a lawyer. The question before the Florida Supreme Court in Castellanos is whether the formula devised by Bush, that limited a claimant’s counsel to an attorney’s fee of only $164.54 for 107.2 hours of legal work reasonably necessary to secure the claimant’s workers’ compensation benefits, is constitutional. Here’s the certified question before the court:

WHETHER THE AWARD OF ATTORNEY’S FEES IN THIS CASE IS ADEQUATE, AND CONSISTENT WITH THE ACCESS TO COURTS, DUE PROCESS, EQUAL PROTECTION, AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS OF THE FLORIDA AND FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONS.

If recent happenings are any indication, the Supreme Court is likely to answer with a resounding NO!

The current majority of Florida’s Supreme Court justices are fair and reasonable human beings. While Florida Supreme Court justices are appointed, every six years they face a retention vote. No justice has ever failed to be retained and, until 2012, no political party has ever actively sought the ouster of a justice through the retention process. In 2012, the Republican Party came off the sideline to seek the ouster of the three justices (Parienti, Lewis, and Quince), each a moderate, up for retention vote. Why? The right-wing disdains moderation. Thankfully, each jurist survived the right-wing onslaught by a large majority.

While these justices and the rest of the reasonable moderate majority are above petty politics, the misguided retention vote fiasco together with years of right-wing overreach and abuse have gotten the court to focus its attention on righting wrongs.

In Florida, the pendulum has swung far too far to the right. Real everyday hardworking people have been hurt, sometimes decimated, by Republican excess. Now is the time to correct those excesses.

The Perfect Storm is upon us.
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Jeffrey P. Gale, P.A. is a South Florida based law firm committed to the judicial system and to representing and obtaining justice for individuals – the poor, the injured, the forgotten, the voiceless, the defenseless and the damned, and to protecting the rights of such people from corporate and government oppression. We do not represent government, corporations or large business interests.

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